Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be accessed by wireless devices of multiple users sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such wireless communications systems include code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time-division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) systems, 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems, and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
In a system such as a cdma2000 1x system, when a wireless device is attempting to either access the system or respond to a page from a base station, the wireless device may need to transmit one or more series of access probes, which may be referred to as access probe sequences. Each access probe is transmitted over an access channel, which is a reverse CDMA channel used by the wireless device to communicate short signaling message exchanges with the base station. These short signaling message exchanges may be related to such operations as call originations, responses to pages, registrations, and connection setups. Further, where a technique such as data-over-signaling is used, an access probe may be used to ferry traffic data, which is data normally transmitted over a data channel.
In data-over-signaling, one or more access probe sequences may be used to transmit an amount of traffic data using the access channel. In cases where access probes are used for data-over-signaling, the access channel may be used to carry data in addition to short signaling message exchanges. Typically, the amount of traffic data to be communicated is small enough to be transmitted using one access probe. Because data-over-signaling transmits traffic data over a signaling channel such as the access channel, it does not require any traffic channels to be setup. Through the use of data-over-signaling, connection setup may be avoided. However, the average size of the access probes may be increased because of additional information in the payload of each access probe.